Magic Knights Entrance Exam Arc | Dungeon Exploration Arc | Royal Capital Assault Arc | Eye of the Midnight Sun Encounter Arc | Underwater Temple Arc | Forest of Witches Arc | Royal Knights Arc | Elf Reincarnation Arc | Heart Kingdom Joint Struggle Arc | Spade Kingdom Raid Arc
Assembly at the Royal Capital
Asta and his teammates are sent on a mission to explore a magical dungeon full of traps. There, they meet up with Yuno and his teammates from the Golden Dawn. But in the dungeon, they go up against the Diamond Kingdom, with the powerful mage Mars who may be too much for them to handle.
Tropes:
- Arc Villain: Mars is a powerful, ruthless mage from the Diamond Kingdom who comes into conflict with the Black Bulls and Golden Dawn.
- Armor Is Useless: Massively subverted when Asta gets stabbed in his chest by Mars.
- Collapsing Lair: After finally defeating the Hell Lotus magic knight, Mars, our heroes (Asta, Noelle, Luck, Yuno, Klaus and Mimosa) find that they have to escape the now quickly collapsing dungeon.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Mars, the mineral mage working with Lotus, inflicts this on Yuno and his teammates. Even after Yuno stops holding back, he's much worse for the wear, while Mars isn't even scratched.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Luck, showing his past with his late mother and why he's obsessed with fighting, and having him choose to fight with his squadmates and become more cooperative with others.
- Dungeon Crawling: The entire story arc is dedicated to exploring a dungeon.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Lotus can't see through his own smoke and has to rely on sensing his opponents' magical signatures. As a result, he's caught off guard since Asta, being an Un-Sorcerer, has no magical signature at all. His earlier advice to Luck about the value of teamwork also works against him since Luck takes the advice to heart and cooperated with his teammates to beat him, something Luck is quick to mention.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Mars is the first real threat to the Black Bulls seen in the series. He is the first antagonist in the series who managed to down the protagonist and the prodigal rival twice in the same arc while going 1 vs. 6 with relative ease after he gets serious. He also critically injures Noelle and Asta during the course of the fight, slicing them open with blood splatter everywhere.
- The Worf Effect: The members of Golden Dawn (Klaus, Mimosa and Yuno) suffer this at the hands of Mars, the mineral mage, from the Diamond Kingdom, despite being from the best magic knight group and Yuno's ace tendencies. This serves the purpose of demonstrating how freakishly powerful Mars was, and Asta would need more than standard determination and anti-magic to defeat him.
